Going Rogue: An American Life (9 page)

Going Rogue

forting arm around the shoulder but would give me the proverbial slug in the arm and rell me to “work harder.” I know now why he did that, and what seemed a double standard at the time did make me work harder and become srronger.

There were practical benefits of having Dad coach, though. He knew how much I disliked playing in the pep band after a rough basketball game, but it was required of all band students that we play for the boys’ games following ours, so Dad would tape my fingers and I’d explain ro the conducror that I needed to be excused yer again from the flute section: “It’s those darn sprained fingers again, sir!”

But rhere was no excuse for not giving my all ro sports-especially not boys. One night at the dinner table, Dad noticed some ink marks on my hand.

“What’s that?” he asked.

I quickly put my hand under the table. “Nothin’.”

“Looked like somebody’s name to me.”

I didn’t say anything, just stared down at my spaghetti.

“You
have a choice between boys and sports,” Dad said srernly.

“You’re at the age where I start losing my good athletes because rhey start liking boys.
You
can’t

both.”

I srood up, walked to the sink, and washed the kid’s initials off my hand. Some might see rhat as the wrong way ro set parameters. But for me, it was fine to have these high expectations
made clear.

Just because Dad steered me away from an early crush didn’t mean he couldn’t appreciate that I had a softer side. Early one morning when I was a teenager, he and I went hunting before school. Dad bagged a moose pretty quickly and began field dressit right away so we could both get to school on time. Killing rwo birds wirh one srone, he could fill our freezer plus bring in specimens ro dissect for his srudents.

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SARAH

PALIN

“Here, hold these,” he said. “I want to show them to my science class

I looked down to see the moose’s eyeballs lying in his palm, still warm ftom the critter’s head. But when he saw me wrinkle my nose and shake my head slightly, he set them aside. He realized that even though he had raised me to be a solid hunting buddy, I had my limits.

In between sports and school we worked. I cleaned a small local office building by myself, every Sunday night, through all four years of high school, for $30 a weekend. I babysat. I waitressed. My sister and I picked strawberries in the mud and mosquitoes at Dearborn’s local farm for five cents a flat. We inventoried groceries on dusty shelves at the local store. We swept parking lots to raise money for our next softball tournament and raked leaves to make money for trips to basketball camps and track competitions in Texas. We did not think to ask our parents to pay our way. I was proud to be able to buy my own running shoes and sports equipment.

I took pride in my work, and my parents took pride in my working. The expectation was that we would all go to college and pay our own way, no questions asked.

It was in softball that Coach Reid Smith taught me another lesson that served me well for years. He told one of out tookie outfielders, who was almost as weak a playet as I was, to quit jumping around and acting all gleeful when she successfully caught a fly ball.

“That’s what you’te supposed to do, girl!” he yelled. “Quit acting surprised when you do what you’re put there to do!” Early in my political career, I would remember that lesson. When things went right under my administration’s leadership, sometimes I’d look around and wonder

no one but me was

jumping with joy, Then I’d recall Coach Smith’s holler from years

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Going Rogue

ago: “You were put there to do this, so don’t act surprised.” (And don’t look to anyone else to cheer you either.)

In
high school, I played basketball, my name next to number 22 on the varsity toster all four years. I mainly rode the bench during close games, until my senior year, because I played point guard behind a much stronger player, my sister Heather. Our team was made up of a group of best girlfriends, like Kim “Tilly” Ketchum and Karen Bush, who shared everything, including our faith. (Tilly taught me to drive her sister’s VW stick shift on the way to practices, and she and our other girlfriend, Adele Morgan, were my partners in shop class, which we took to avoid home ec.) We were the Cinderella team my sophomore and junior years, having fallen short in hardfought state championship games in back-to-back years. But as. soon as Heather and her senior teammates graduated, the B-team finally had the opportunity to prove we bad it in us.

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By my senior year of high school, I had been praying that God wouldn’t have in mind for my future one of the local boys I’d grown up with.

loved those guys a lot, but I looked at them all

like brothers. I had just about given up hope that I would ever meet a guy I could really like as more than just a buddy, Then a
new kid came to town.

In
late August 1981, my dad drove

Wasilla High to get his

classroom ready for the start of the school year. That night at dinner, he had news to share.

“Stopped by the gym to talk with some of the coaches today,” he said. “That new kid, Palin, was there. I watched him practice for a while. I can tell you right now, he’s the best basketball player Wasilla’s ever had.”

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